Jamboxdotcom said:
I'm a firm believer in Max Brooks's rules as laid out in The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z. But, that's just me. Some people would disagree (including many scientists).
I love these books, but I've always had two problems with them. The first is the notion that zombies are still alive but immune to disease (which they're obviously not since they were "infected" in the first place).
The problem with this idea is manifold: his zombies are apparently toxic to microorganisms, but how? Not only do microorganisms exist which can assimilate arsenic, uranium, heavy metals, and virtually all other toxic materials. Even if this is a novel material, microorganisms adapt as the rate of weeks and months because their generation time can be as little as ten minutes.
In reality, even with "toxic" zombies, some bacterium or another would evolve to feed off of them eventually, and because of their clustering, zero hygiene practices, gaping open wounds, and virtually unlimited supply, this bacterium would multiply and spread rapidly until it infected and consumed all zombies. Even better, because it evolved specifically to cannibalize a toxic host, regular humans would probably be immune to the pathogen. They could go back to Middle Ages style biological warfare and catapult sick zombies into crowds of "healthy" zombies and let nature do the rest
My other problem with Max Brook's zombies is that they can walk under water, even sea water, indefinitely.
Even if they are toxic to all the various organisms that would feed on them, they're also
novel. So each of the billions of small fish, plankton, sharks, crabs, etc., is going to take a bite out of them first. The zombies would be either torn to pieces outright or immobilized before long. Not to mention blunt damage from currents, falling, etc.
Speaking of falling, his zombies lack the co-ordination to climb into the elevated buildings his survivors make for themselves, so how would they
ever be able to climb out of a trench or pit at the bottom of the ocean? The ocean floor isn't even; far from it (speaking of which, neither is the earth's surface - a lot of zombies would wind up trapped in quarries, canyons, the cauldrons of volcanoes, sinkholes, etc.) The sides of many trenches are virtually sheer. More importantly, many of these trenches are hundreds of miles long. A zombie attempting to walk across the ocean floor would almost inevitably get trapped in one. Or worse, in a thermal heat vent and be boiled or incinerated.
And this is all assuming that they wouldn't float (which many decaying corpses do). And if they float, the currents are just going to carry most of them into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
...Which would be kind of awesome actually. How's
that for a symbol of consumerism, Romero? ;p